


家 A Chance at a Home

by lamniform



Category: Spectrobes
Genre: Action, Aliens, And Jado joins the NPP but this isn't a focus of this fic, Aobasar, Banter, Descriptions of krawls' bodies might be a little 'Eww' sometimes, Dongiga, Fighting; but no graphic injury descriptions, Gekikuri, Gen, Gorberus, Grant is only in one chapter; so are Wright Jado and Kate, Hanebakuon, Inkaflare, Oh; I should mention it's an AU where Jado lives, Pagoyama, Plays after Spectrobes Origins, Sci-Fi, Tenkro, That's all the spectrobes in this, There's mentions of Dave and Hank, mild horror elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:59:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24326152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamniform/pseuds/lamniform
Summary: Rallen feels overwhelmed with the task of looking after Spectrobes after there are no more krawl left to fight. He is an officer of the NPP after all, and not a monster husbandman! A handful of years after the events that transpired in the Kaio system, an accident leads him and his partner stumbling over an abandoned space station, which ends up tieing back in with the problem that had been getting on his nerves.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	1. Moments of a generic day

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! I initially started writing this with the sheer idea of portraying spectrobes like normal animals, but I got a little sidetracked when a different story idea came to me and I ended up mixing the two premises together. A good thing really, because after writing the first chapter back when I still only had the 'Animals' concept, I was left thinking "Okay. What now?". Then, about half a year later, I ended up writing the rest of the fanfic within 5 days. @u@ Hope you enjoy

As fun and rewarding as taking care of spectrobes was, Rallen found himself lost in the middle of a sea of work that he never planned on doing. Once the krawl attacks were over, he still had all the spectrobes he’d awakened and trained at his thumbs. First and foremost, he had joined the Planetary Patrol out of a fascination for spacecraft - fast jet-like builds especially. Flying had always been his passion, as was evident on his skills record, and when it came to his other duties as an officer, he took great pride in defending others. That latter part eventually just so happened to be about defending citizens of Nanairo – and for a while Kaio – from krawl. He had more so expected his job to be about interfering with human criminal behavior, but before he was old enough to be approved for that kind of duty, he came into contact with spectrobes and krawl, and was assigned that as his main task out of necessity. After all, he was just a junior officer when all of it started.

Now, he was an officer, still young, but capable of handling normal officer duties. Despite that though, he was more of a pet shelter owner. He loved his spectrobes, but taking care of them left him feeling utterly underloaded. There were days where he wanted to chuck his prizmod away, and leave it to the person who found it to handle all the work that came with it. Sadly, that wouldn’t work. No one in Nanairo except him and Aldous had the ability to use the prizmod, and the old man’s nerves were too rusty to take care of the large amount of critters under Rallen’s watch. Not that Aldous wasn’t still a capable man, both mentally and physically, but he knew his limits. He did help out sometimes, but he was a lot more occupied with other tasks. He spent most of his time educating Nanairo’s engineers and scientists on Giornan technology – at least as best as he could, seeing as he had never studied the intricacies of it.

Rallen could keep all his spectrobes inside the prizmod and the simulation worlds run on the incubator devices for an unlimited length of time, without any so far noticeable drawbacks. This would be the easiest way to provide them with everything they needed, but that simply struck him as wrong. They were living creatures, and the Ancients’ technology used for them was nothing more than extremely advanced… well, technology. A living creature shouldn’t have their consciousness confined to a digital world when there was an entire organic one at its feet.

He was currently busy ruffling through the neck feathers of a tenkro sitting on his raised arm. The bird spectrobe seemed to enjoy the treatment, leaning in on wherever the fingers came from.

Rallen at the time didn't have his work gloves on, or any other protection for in case the tenkro were to bite him. He was sitting on a balcony on Kollin in a simple black tank top and a pair of baggy olive green shorts. Day off.

He moved on to pet the tenkro's cheeks with circular movements, and then the top of its head in a similar fashion to the neck. At one point it cawed and recoiled, scratched its side with a talon, and then let Rallen continue. After a while the spectrobe leaned down, as if to tell him to move to its nape and back. The officer obliged.

In due time Tenkro decided it had gotten enough help cleaning its plumage, and jerked its head away to start work with its beak. Rallen tried to gently nudge it off his arm and onto the table next to him, but only got annoyed caws in return, along with some movements close to biting him.

He sighed.

With his free hand, Rallen pulled his communications device out of a pocket on the side of his pants and scrolled through the new messages. Normally he avoided staying up-to-date with low relevancy information on his days off, but whatever. Browsing was a little tricky with a touchscreen layout meant to be used with two hands, but it wasn't impossible. How did people with only one usable hand type on these things? They probably got different devices. Why was this the first time he thought about this? "You're making me ask big questions here. Thank you." He addressed the Spectrobe. It stopped its preening for a moment before continuing, but didn't look at him. He'd have to ask Dave about the devices sometime.

All mails checked. Nothing interesting among them. Ever since the second krawl invasion of Nanairo, the system had been in a state of normalcy. The spectrobes weren't needed for their specific powers, so neither was Rallen needed as a spectrobe Master. He had taken most of his duties as Junior Officer up again the moment he’d returned from Kaio, but a significant chunk of his work-time had to be rededicated to taking care of his critters of light.  
The NPP yet had to come up with a new use for the spectrobes. They couldn't be released into the wild - it would upset the natural balance of any planet in the solar system - but Rallen had taken a strong stance towards everyone who thought otherwise that he couldn't confine them in his prizmod forever. The device could produce decent areas of artificial reality, but those were severely limited, and when essential aspects of being alive like aging, reproducing, and interacting with the material world were taken into account, it just didn't make the cut.  
Granted, Rallen had never seen a spectrobe reproduce. Aldous had. He didn't go into detai-

Rallen's thoughts were interrupted when tenkro shook its entire body, cocked its head around to correct some final areas with its beak, shook itself again, and then called it a day. It flapped its wings and jumped off Rallen's arm and onto the balcony floor.  
“Like a chicken.” Rallen mused. The spectrobe looked up towards the edge of the balcony railing a few times while walking around, but then decided to make its way back inside, which was good. Rallen hadn't bothered to turn on the force field to prevent airborne spectrobes from flying away because tenkros couldn't fly, and neither could this one jump high enough to get onto the rail. It hopefully learned that much from its failed past attempts to get up there.

Rallen followed Tenkro back inside. He had his back turned to the room's interior while he shut the balcony door. When he turned around, he shrieked and stumbled backwards. His unexpected counterpart reacted with similar surprise. The anuberos blundered back a few steps, eyes wide open. It had silently walked up on him, its long head tilted downwards to properly get close to its owner – uncomfortably close. Rallen had almost run into its face after turning around.  
The man caught his breath. “Sorry! Sorry. I wasn't expecting that.” His posture became more relaxed and he held out a hand to anuberos. The spectrobe took a step forward and leaned close to the hand, examining it. It then looked at Rallen's face and walked away, no longer startled. Rallen let out a sigh. He'd whack that anuberos in the head one of those days. Again! He really hoped he wouldn't.

Pondering his past accidents with his spectrobes while scratching his head, Rallen made his way over the the small storage room where their food was kept - their minerals. The room was all the way across the large roaming hall the NPP provided for the ancient creatures. The floor was coated in layers of earth and grass, and the walls and ceiling had a good amount of large windows built in, allowing sunlight to enter naturally, as the hall was part of the top floor of one of the organization's skyscrapers. This roaming area had come to provide a vital relief for the spectrobes. It removed them from the digital monotony of their prizmod slots and incubator cells. They couldn't be left to move about in nature without strict supervision. The wildlife of the presence didn't mix well with them, neither flora nor fauna. Were they to be kept in digital confines for too long, though, they'd get mentally and physically sick. Sadly, even letting them go about their day while in specified room like this roaming hall wasn’t an option, as there wasn’t enough space for all of them to be in at the same time. Rallen had to be there to let them take turns. This left the NPP in a bit of an animal welfare conundrum, not knowing where to keep the creatures, and Rallen working overtime, watching over them mostly on his own. Jeena helped a little. Jeena in fact helped a lot, but the spectrobes didn't trust her as much as they did Rallen. It would likely have been a different situation if they both still owned a Cosmolink.

He opened the door to the storage room. Promptly, the tenkro he'd been on the balcony with wormed its way through between his legs to steal itself some shiny stones, which equally promptly pinned a frown on Rallen's face. “Oh no you won't!” he scolded and hurried after the avian. Skilled hands grasped the feathery beast before in could even get close to one of the mineral containing bags. The tenkro cawed and flapped its wings angrily, causing Rallen to hold it at a distance from himself, but not letting it break free. He was about to remove the bird from the room when he heard heavy stomps approach. A face filled the entire doorframe, a pagoyama. It was far too big to enter through the human-sized door. It simply looked at Rallen with anticipation, blocking the only exit. Rallen's expression turned sad. The pagoyama laid down on the spot.

Ten minutes later, the main door slid open as Jeena entered the hall. She was met with no spectrobe in sight.

After a short moment of puzzled silence, she called out for who she'd expected to meet. “Rallen?” The reply she received was noise from the mineral storage room – the noise of rocks hitting the metal floor inside. The door was noticeably open and while she made her way over to it, Rallen already peeked his head outside. “Hey Jeena.”

“Rallen, where's your spectrobes?” She tilted her head to the side. “I thought it's time to let them run around.”

“Ah, I called them back.” He said, tapping the prizmod on his left forearm. “They cornered me as soon as I opened the snack room. Well, two of them did. I got a little overwhelmed and called all of them back on accident.”

Jeena gave him a worried look, but with an understanding smile. Then she noticed broken minerals on the floor behind Rallen, ones which he likely dropped earlier when she'd called for him. “I'll help you clean those up. I'm free for the rest of the day.” She said as she walked past him into the room and picked up an empty box.

“What? For real?”

Jeena snorted. “Yes, of course. You didn't drop that many.”

“Wait, no, I meant that you're done with the day already. Also, wait about putting those in there. We can feed the guys those right away.” He pulled forward a cart from a corner of the room. It was used to more easily transport large quantities of minerals into the roaming hall which were too inconvenient to carry by hand, even if all it took was getting them outside the room. Minerals were heavy, even when carried for only a short distance. 

“Mh-hm, you heard right! Hank and I did a few test flights with the repaired ship and it seems in perfect working condition.” Jeena happily put the box down and knelt down to pick up the broken mineral shards. “So...” She realized it'd be better to put gloves on. Her own fingerless ones wouldn’t protect her from cuts. “Rallen, do we have any gloves in here?” She asked while looking at her hands. Her partner was in the process of picking out various not-broken minerals from crates and bags. “Huh? Why?” He looked over to see her wave her fingers at him. “Ohhh.” He placed a small colourful pile into the crate. “No, sorry. Let me get those instead.” He grinned and waved his fully gloved fingers at her in a similar manner she had.

Jeena narrowed her eyes, but smiled at the gesture. “Thanks.” She stood up and lightly punched Rallen in his arm as she walked past to get more minerals instead of him.

“You're very welcome! Can you get more Corona and Flash ones? I already got plenty Aurora for the few Aurora spectrobes I got out today.”

“Sure.”


	2. Mishap

A rumbling escaped the Zorza engine room. An explosion followed.

A large chunk of the space station’s outer plating was torn off due to the impact’s pressure. Vacuum dragged out the artificial atmosphere, causing even more machines to lose their functioning. Even if all this only affected one sector, the resulting short circuit made the station’s safety protocols flare up and enter a contingency plan that had never been used beyond testing. Seeing as Zuiichi station was an ancient space craft, its systems had gathered multiple flaws over the course of running on autopilot for millennia. 

Safety protocols demanded that in case of severe endangerment of the inhabitants, the station would open a portal directly back into its planet’s atmosphere, to ensure safe escape if necessary. This feat would have been possible, had the craft not severely strayed from its original orbit. The long distance messed with the automatic destination finding. Instead, the flawed system attempted to find the next closest planet with gravitational properties of its home. While they weren’t the closest planets fitting that description, it did almost succeed in the task, opening a portal in the in-between space of several planets within a system. Sadly, the portal was nowhere near the size that would have been required for the station to pass through, and the steering autopilot did not register any cue to move forward, so the station simply remained in place with a comparatively tiny portal at its front, while the internal short circuit continued to rupture several electrical cords.

On the other side of the portal, a familiar spaceship was making its way forward from Kollin to Nessa.

Rallen and Jeena were in the middle of going on an excavation trip to the sandy planet in order to get Corona type minerals, as they’d found a spot where plenty of them lay buried.

As coincidence wanted, they didn’t reach Nessa. Halfway through their flight, the view of space outside their cockpit warped and they were sucked into an ever so familiar portal.

Rallen threw his arms up in the air in anger. “Not again!”

“Rallen! Get your hands back on the steering wheel! Try to get us out of here!” Jeena shouted at him as she rushed forward from where she was standing in the back. She clambered about over Rallen’s shoulder to grab the wheel herself in a vain attempt to turn the ship’s direction.

“Yeah, yeah.” Rallen groaned in frustration as he took the controls himself again. He tried to push to the side with all the strength the steering panel allowed for.

Both their attempts left them without the wanted result, as the portal simply sucked the ship into the direction they’d entered in. All their fuss resulted in was that their ship started spinning. Entirely out of control it traversed the spacial passage, hitting several asteroids and pieces of debris that – if they’d gotten a chance to look at it – looked as if they had been parts of a dark grey spaceship.

Jeena was thrown to the side by one impact, hitting her head. She lost consciousness.

When she came back to, Rallen was kneeling over her, a bandage in his hand. He was in the middle of gently dabbing a spot on her head with something cold and wet. She moved, suddenly noticing just how stiff and sore her body was, causing her to groan. “What happened?”

“Hey, hey, stay still for just a moment longer.” Rallen scolded and pulled away the towel with antiseptic, going on to wrap the bandage around her head. “There. Good as new.”

Jeena sighed. “I’m glad. So, now, what even happened?” She did her best at slowly dragging herself up into a sitting position. Rallen offered her a hand and helped by pulling her up.

“What do you last remember? We were sucked into that portal and the ship went absolutely wild. You fell and hit your head.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember that.” She ran her fingers over where the bandage was on her head, approximately figuring out where she was wounded on one side - more due to the pain she felt when she reached the spot than due to the bandage. “If I wasn’t feeling so bad right now, I’d be mad at myself for not staying in the passenger seat as usual.”

Rallen frowned at her with pity. “Well, we have much bigger fish to worry about right now. I get the feeling we’re pretty much stranded in space.” He remembered a very similar situation that occurred the last time they came into contact with a portal. “… Again.” Jeena facepalmed, and slouched back onto the ground. While their lack of orientation was Rallen’s biggest concern of the moment, he then remembered the other pressing issue he should let his partner know about. “And there’s something else I think you’ll want to have a look at yourself.” He turned his head towards the cockpit window and stood up.

Jeena, for the first time since waking up again, turned to look at their outer surroundings. Hadn’t Rallen let her know that they were still in space, she might have in her pained stupor assumed that they were inside a large spacecraft hall. The entire view she could glimpse from her position on the floor was taken up by grey metal plating. “What… What is that?” She got up onto her wobbly feet to get closer to the window.

“Wish I could tell you.” Rallen watched as Jeena pulled the pilot seat aside to take a seat in it. “I haven’t exactly had a good look at it yet because I wanted to get you patched up first.” He walked up beside her to stare outside, and leaned on the seat from the side.

“It looks like… a huge spaceship.” Jeena let her view wander from one end of the cockpit window to the other. From her new position it was noticeable that they were still in space, the craft didn’t take up all of the visible space anymore, but it was still gigantic. “Who could have built such a thing?” She mumbled more to herself than to Rallen.

“No idea. Maybe we can ask?” The man suggested. “I haven’t tried hailing it yet.”

Jeena went right ahead to press several buttons in order to attempt just that. They both waited as the call went out. No answer.

“Nobody home, it seems.” Jeena muttered.

Rallen left his position leaning on the pilot seat in order to stretch his arms. “Guess we need to go and try to meet them, in case they’re just not feeling talkative. Think we can find a docking space somewhere? This thing’s bound to have multiple with that kind of size.”

“Rallen…” Jeena started in order to protest his hardly thought-through decision, but she didn’t need to continue in order to get her thoughts of doubt across.

“Right, first we should have a look around to see if we’re actually lost in space. I highly doubt we’re anywhere close to home, considering I’ve never seen that behemoth around, but I guess that should be the first course of action.” He scratched the back of his head and sighed.

Jeena gave her partner a sympathetic look and started up the space orientation system. She drew up a holographic map of surrounding space, and ran analytics over the stellar constellations surrounding them. There were no stars or planets directly near them, but it could work off the farther away ones just the same. “Oh, good. The system recognizes where we are.”

Rallen perked up at those words. “What? Really?”

Jeena’s expression became more somber as she looked at the map for a few seconds longer. “Yes, but it’s really far away from Nanairo. Our fuel reserves wouldn’t make up for a fraction of that trip.”

Rallen’s shoulders dropped as he heaved in frustration. “At least I expected it.”

Jeena turned her seat around to face him better. “Guess we really do need to move in there. It looks ancient, Rallen. I don’t think we’ll find anyone there.”

He nodded at her. “At the very least we’ll find some useable technology. I don’t see anyone or anything else around here, so this thing’s the only possible source of the portal that brought us here.” He thought a bit harder about this. “Okay, or someone in Nanairo managed to open a portal to this one specific place, but that sounds like an unlikely conspiracy.”

Jeena gave him a lopsided smile. “We’ll keep the conspiracy theory in mind just in case.” After saying this she turned her seat around again, and started steering their ship forward in search for an entrance into the space station ahead of them.

In took her a while, but Jeena did find what appeared to be a docking station. It was a large indent to the side of the station, a hall with several spaceships standing in it. The room was only separated from space by what looked like an atmospheric force field. 

Rallen squinted at the sight. “Aldous mentioned the Ancients using something like that, right? To preserve air and forego the hassle of using evacuation areas when moving in ships to a station?”

“He did. I just hope this is what we’re looking at.”

“Looks really likely. Any ideas on how to test it?”

“No.” Jeena bit her lip. “I’ll move in slowly. Let’s hope it doesn’t damage anything.” Rallen gave her a nod and she carefully pushed their spaceship forward through the field.

They were lucky and passed through without repercussions to either them or their ship. The lights of the bay turned on as their movement was registered. Jeena moved their craft to park in line with all the others that already stood inside the hall. She ran an atmosphere check to see if it was safe to exist without safety measures. The test was positive. “Safe to go. What’s the plan?” She looked up at Rallen over her shoulder, who was again leaning on the seat, once more looking as if he was in deep thought over their situation.

He blinked a few times while he was blankly staring outside before reacting to Jeena’s question. “What?” He looked down at her in exasperation. “Don’t tell me the plan only relies on me. You know what happens when I’m the one who comes up with all of it. I’m mostly good for improvising.”

Jeena laughed. “I know, I know. That’s true… Let me rephrase it. Any ideas?”

Rallen nodded in approval at the different way of words. He crossed his arms and put a hand to his chin. “Let’s see. We go outside, exit this docking bay, and find the control center of this thing. Sounds pretty easy.”

“Mh-hm.” Jeena agreed. “Sounds like a good outline to orient ourselves with. Considering how huge this place looked from the outside, I’m guessing it’ll take us a while to find our way around to find said command center, if they have one.”

Her partner shrugged. “Yeah, you’re right there. But better than nothing.” He watched as she got out of the seat, about to prepare for leaving. His view focused on her head injury. “Hey, do you feel fit enough to walk around that much?” Concern crossed his face.

Jeena gave him a grateful look for the question. “I’m fine. I still feel a bit woozy on my legs, but I’ll take it slow.”

“Alright. Moment you start feeling worse, we’re taking you back here to rest. Will escort you myself for a lack of other people.” Rallen smirked. 

“Sure thing, doc.” Jeena waved a hand at him in faux dismissal.

“Don’t call me that…” His smirk dropped and he went to grab everything he needed for leaving as well.

The hall was – as both had already come to realize upon flying in – huge. It was a fitting size when one considered the overall width of the space station, but it was an even more shocking place to be in once they were outside their spaceship, and could fully take in the room’s vastness. The excessive amount of space seemed to be a necessity, taking into account how many other spaceships were resting around theirs. All of them were larger than the NPP jet, which was a comparatively small craft when put beside other Nanairan space cruisers, designed for fast travel between the solar system’s planets. Nevertheless, even if their flight had been one of the larger specimens that day, there still would have been at least the size difference between a pig and a cow.

The officers made their way through between the foreign ships. All of them were tinged in a thin layer of dust, which was an indicator that they hadn’t been used for a while, but didn’t help with identifying just how long that timespan had been. If there had been no movement in the hall for ages, and no dust was moved in through a faulty ventilation system, then how would the layer get thicker? They both couldn’t conclude on surefire deductions about the ships’ usage before they reached one of the hall’s walls. Starting from there they moved into one direction to find an exit. It didn’t take them too long before they reached a round gate, evident as the main entrance portal. It was of a simple design, seemingly consisting of two metal plates that met in the middle. One of the plates had what looked like a regular door built into it. Rallen looked up the wall to see a window a bit to the side above the gate. His guess was that an oversight office was inside, to keep track of who entered and left. At least that would be the job of anyone inside of it.

While Rallen was busy pondering over the purpose of the window, Jeena had a look at the gate and an access panel located to its left. It consisted of several buttons with symbols painted above them. Their meaning was easy to guess. One depicted the gate in its open state, one its closed one, and a last one seemed to indicate a state where it was locked in position. “Rallen, I’ll try opening this.”

“Sure, go ahead.” He called from his position some steps away. He decided to join her at the panel after just a moment longer spent glancing around the hall.

Jeena pressed the ‘Open’ button, and a green light above the panel lit up while she had her finger on it, but there was no reaction from the gate itself. She tried pressing the ‘Lock in position’ button, and a different light flashed blue, after which she again tried pushing ‘Open’, but there still was no reaction. She put her hands on her hips. “Guess there’s no more logical solutions with such a simple interface.” She tried pressing the ‘Close’ button – which made a red light flare – just to test all their options, but that also elicited to response.

While she had her go at a few more combinations with the ‘Lock in position’ button, Rallen had a closer look at the door in the gate. He tried the handle, but it was locked. “Would’ve been too easy…” He was about to consider his options, when a very – to him – obvious thought crossed his mind. He looked at the weapons device on his right arm. “Hey, Jeena, if you don’t get that panel to work, I can always still shoot this here open.” He selected the blaster function on his device and pointed it at the door’s lock while questioningly looking at Jeena.

Jeena – a finger still on a button of the panel – looked back at him, a bit dumbfoundedly. She sighed. “Go ahead. I get the feeling the gate has a malfunction.” She then gave him a smile and nod, as to approve his plan.

Rallen smiled back. “I’m liking the start of this.” He said referring to the early use of weaponry, and properly aimed the blaster.

“But if anyone is here after all, you’re responsible for damaging their property.” She laughed.

Rallen groaned, but shot the door’s lock anyway. One impact wasn’t enough, but after a few more shots he was able to fling it open. Immediately after doing so he regretted his decision, as an emerging cloud of smoke burned his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this chapter labeled as 'Chapter 1' in my personal files instead of 'Chapter 2', as it's the one where the real plot starts. Thanks for reading; hope you're liking it so far!


	3. Start of explorations

Seeing the cloud of dark fog that was encapsuling the coughing and wheezing Rallen, Jeena rushed forward to pull him to the side and push the door shut. A closed door didn’t cause the smoke that had already entered the hall to vanish, so she got a good amount of it into her lungs and eyes as well, but she managed to move herself and Rallen away from the spot where the highest concentration of it was right in front of the door. She could see it slowly dilute by mixing with the rest of the air. Her head was droning with a headache.

“You okay?” She questioned her partner beside her, who was still coughing.

Rallen hacked. “Yeah. Think so.” He rubbed one of his eyes. Both were reddened. “Do we have gas masks in the ship?”

Jeena stared at him. “We do.” She frowned. “I can’t believe your first thought Is to get a gas mask and move in there! Who knows what it does to your skin?” Her voice was genuinely upset, bordering on being angry.

“Right, right, yeah. But look, we don’t have full-body safety suits, do we?” He countered, equally raising his voice.

“No, no we don’t…” She shook her head, and placed a hand on it – a vain attempt on making it hurt less. “I don’t like this, Rallen.”

“I’m not asking you to come along. Definitely not with your injury. I can keep the comm link on and talk to you the entire time while you stay at the ship. One of us has to go through there.” He paused as a different thought hit him, but continued to talk before Jeena could respond. “Either that or we build a ladder to up there.” He pointed a finger towards the window he was observing earlier. “And I don’t exactly see that happening.”

Jeena followed the direction he was pointing in with her eyes. “We could dismantle the other ships here to haphazardly build a ladder or stairs, but that would take a lot of time…” She muttered.

Rallen simply grunted in agreement. She sighed. “Alright, then let’s do what you suggest. Let’s go back to the ship, you get a gas mask and go in here,” she pointed at the door “and I stay at the ship.” Her expression looked far from happy as she was saying this, but she gestured her hands in a way to indicate her surrender to the circumstances.

Rallen nodded grimly. “Let’s.” They made their way back to the ship and did just that. Before Rallen left with a gas mask in one hand, though, Jeena stopped him and pressed a device into his other hand.

“Here. This is a gas analyzer. It’s linked to the ship’s computers, so I’d appreciate it if you could send the data of some sample tests my way.” She looked at him with a frown. “That way I might be able to figure out what kind of smoke that is, and what might be causing it.”

“Test the bad air. Got it.” Ralled nodded at her and attached the device to his belt to make it easier to carry. He then set his comm link to constant transmission. “I’ll be in touch.”

Jeena gave him a small wave as he left the ship. “Won’t be running anywhere.” She jokingly told him as they parted ways.

It hadn’t been long since Rallen made his way back to the gate when he already heard Jeena speek to him over the communication channel. “Uhm, Rallen? There’s a problem.”

“I only just left and there’s already an issue?” His voice was angrier than he intended, due to the cranky mood the accident from earlier had out him in, even if he was in the process of calming down. He doubted that Jeena didn’t notice, but it didn’t seem to faze her, or at the very least she didn’t show that it did.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you leaving. It’d be a problem just the same if you were here.” Her voice was calm. “Remember all the space clutter that hit us in the portal? It did a good amount of damage to the ship. I’m surprised all the engines still worked for us to fly in here, but I better go through with some repairs before we start them up again.”

Rallen definitely didn’t want to hear those news, but the circumstances left him unable to feel more upset. “Guess it’s good then that we’ll be stuck here for a while anyway.” He reached the gate while speaking. “Thanks for letting me know. Take it easy, Jeena. Don’t overwork yourself.” He normally would have worded the kind remark in a more light-hearted manner, but he was in a too serious mindset for that at that moment.

“Will do.” Was all he got as a reply before the conversation was over.

Rallen put on the gas mask he’d been carrying and went ahead to open the door a second time. Once more, the stinging gas was eager to expand into a larger space like the landing hall. He passed through the door and closed it behind himself. It was pitch black inside, but Rallen had realized ahead of time that he’d potentially needed a flashlight. Toxic smoke wasn’t an indicator for a building’s equipment to be in good working condition. He attached the tiny, but powerful light source to his chest. The thick smoke inhibited the flashlight’s beam to move ahead far, but it was better than pure darkness. Rallen at least could see the floor in front of him.

The space he had entered was a hallway from what he could see. Just like the gate behind him, it was the shape of a half-circle. Looking above himself, he could see a lamp imbedded where the walls met through the slightly dimmed glasses of his gas mask. That was all he could gleam of his surroundings, so he moved ahead. There was a faint crackling sound in the distance. Rallen wasn’t familiar enough to guess that it was ruptured wires emitting sparks, but it – and the overall darkness – put him on the lookout for potential dangers anyway. Aside from the quiet sound, the only noise filling the hallway was the clanking of Rallen’s steps on the metal floor.

It didn’t take him long to reach the first set of doors – one to his left and one to his right. They were normal rectangular doors, but were surrounded by a circular shape that seemed to mimic the half-circle that the docking bay’s gate was, without actually being an openable gate. The half-crescent was solely decoration as far as he could tell. He walked up to the right one and tried to open it, but it was locked. He tried the left one to the same result. This time, he refrained from shooting them open, and instead decided to walk on ahead. While it was unlikely that he would get himself into even worse situations by opening more doors, as he was already standing in a hallway filled with unidentified toxic fume, he didn’t feel like branching out into small seemingly unimportant paths just yet. Thinking of ‘unidentified’, though, he realized that he had yet to run a test with the gas analysis device that Jeena had handed him. He removed it from his belt and turned it on. She didn’t explain him how to use it, so he simply ran the pre-set program that was the first available one. A few minutes spent with a whirring device sucking in air in his hand and the analysis was done. Rallen lifted his right arm – which was were his comm link was on - closer to his head. “Hey Jeena, do I have to press anything to send you the data?”

It took a few moments for his partner to get back to him. “No, I can access it by myself from here. Where are you right now?”

“Not far yet. Behind the door is a hallway. I walked ahead for a bit until I found two doors - both are locked – then I remembered to test this smoke stuff.”

“Okay. If you remember to take another sample later that’d be nice, just to do cross checking, but I’ll have a look at what I can deduce from the first one in a bit already.” Rallen could hear the clinking of metal tools on the other end of the line. Jeena was in the process of looking for which implements she required for starting the ship repairs.

“Alrighty, will do.” He would have given her a thumbs up, had they been using video transmission along with voice. He attached the analysis device back to his belt and continued down the hallway. The thought crossed his mind that turning on a ventilation system to filter out the smoke would be convenient, but seeing as the atmosphere was possible to breathe in despite the contamination, there was bound to be some kind of ventilation system in place already, yet it didn’t do a good job at any sort of filtering that was necessary to rid the air of toxins. Slightly lost in thought, while at the same time highly concentrated on his surroundings, he this time kept close to one of the walls to have a better view of everything.

The further he moved ahead, the darker the walls became. Rallen at first didn’t register the change, as it was a gradual one, but he eventually noticed the thick layer of black particles that stuck to the walls. Evidently precipitate of the smoke surrounding him. If he or Jeena had thought of it, he could have taken along any sort of small containers to bring some back to the ship. Well, if she could even make use of that. Jeena was much more a mechanic than the type of scientist who would know what to do with this stuff. Maybe she didn’t even know how to analyze it. With more distance walked, the wall deposits took on inhomogeneous patterns. Large and small spots dotted the walls’ platting

The next break from monotony Rallen found on his travels was a partly opened gate. Smaller than the hangar gate, but with a control panel to its side nonetheless. An orange light slowly but continuously went on and off above the panel, indicating the gate’s state of ‘Not quite open’ and ‘Not quite closed’. He moved closer and proceeded to poke his head inside the room. After shining the flashlight into every possible direction, he walked inside. It looked like a workshop. Several tables scattered the room in mostly well-arranged alignment. Many of them had tools and what seemed to be small spaceship parts laying on them. A handful of larger parts lay on oil stained towels on the floor. A few carts stood in one corner, probably formerly used for transporting the parts that couldn’t be carried by hand. To all intents and purposes, the place looked like a repair workshop for spacecraft technology small enough to be fit through the gates.

There was a lot more dust in this area than there had been in the spaceship landing bay. Rallen moved a gloved finger over the surface of one table to see just how much had accumulated. Beside it being a lot, the observation also helped him conclude that the dust was well-mixed with the smoke. It slightly stuck to his glove’s surface, so he had to rub it off with force. He wandered around the room a little to see if he could find anything interesting, such as paper files, and did indeed find something. One of the tables had a blueprint laying over the rest of the junk on it. Rallen took it, and carefully wiped away the dust, as to not damage the sheet. Unsurprisingly, it was the blueprint of another spaceship part, as far as he could tell. Rallen took a closer look at the scant amount of writing that came with the visual instructions, to see if the language was at all familiar to him. Nada. It was all strings of chicken scratch to him. He placed the sheet back where he’d taken it from and was about to turn around to head back out of the room, when he heard a sound.

There was a scraping sound behind him. It sounded close, as if just outside in the hallway, and he hadn’t even noticed up until that point. He had been too invested in investigating the room’s contents. The scrapping, which sounded like it was dragging a body across the floor behind him, drew closer. Then it stopped. Rallen activated his blaster as quietly as he could. He considered turning off the flashlight, but he wasn’t a man for stealth. He would face whatever it was that was heading his way anyway.

After the moment of silence, the thing outside chuggeled, and rushed forward by grabbing onto the gate from the side with its claws, flinging itself forward into the room from there. Rallen whirled around, shining light on the intricately black and red pattered mass covered in claws and fur that was rushing directly at him. He shot, but the few shots he landed while it jumped across tables didn’t do much but slow it down for the fraction of a second each. Rallen knew a krawl when he saw one. It jumped at him, and he just barely rolled to the side to dodge. Kneeling on the floor, he threw his left arm to the side, activating his prizmod. “Aobasar! Help me out!”

A spark of light shot out of the device and grew to the full size of the feathered beast beside the mpectrobe master before the light dispelled and left the bird-like creature ready to attack. Aobasar screeched and shot forward at the krawl, knocking several tables and their contents to the side. It pummeled the semi-amorphous creature with both talons and wings, but it escaped the barrage of hits and went to charge at Rallen again. Aobasar shot a gust of wind at it with its wings, making the krawl splat against the wall behind Rallen. Its master was pushed back slightly as well by the force, but had been better at bracing himself. As soon as he could, he turned around to look back at the krawl and that way have it be in his flashlight’s radius. It still wasn’t done for, but for the moment lay confined on the floor. Aobasar shot forward again, and this time attacked with its beak while holding the krawl down with a talon. While this was happening, Rallen scanned the rest of the room with both his eyes and ears to figure out if any other krawl had entered, but it didn’t seem to be the case yet. Behind him, Aobasar had finished its work, and the krawl had started to dissolve into lifeless residue. The spectrobe walked up beside him, still on edge and equally listening for more offenders. It cocked its head around at the crackling sound of electric sparks in the distance, but also didn’t perceive anything classifiable as hostile activity.

Rallen decided to fill his partner in on the news. He kept his voice low. “Jeena? There’s krawl here.” He put a hand over the audio output, expecting a loud reaction from her.

“What?!” Was the anticipated exclamation from the other end. “Oh this is bad. It does explain the smoke, probably… and how this place is seemingly abandoned…” Rallen could practically sense her starting to pace up and down where she was.

“Mh-hm.” He replied in agreement. “Jeena, listen. It’s just been one krawl so far, and neither I nor my spectrobes are hurt. We’ll push on forward for a while. I’ll see how bad the situation is. So far I’ve gone down a linear path. If there’s too many, I’ll make a run for it.” He considered the fact that he hadn’t properly checked to see if there were any other openings in the hallway beside doors, such as ventilation shafts. If there were some, there was a risk of being cut off, but that didn’t particularly diminish his confidence. “And you know me, there’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“Rallen…” Jeena started. “Okay. Just… be careful.”

“As usual. I’ll still be in touch, but probably try to not contact me until you haven’t heard from me in a long while. Don’t want to attract unwanted attention.”

“Of course.” And with that, there was silence again.

Rallen glimpsed at Aobasar beside him. The spectrobe’s eyes had a faint green gleam to them even though it was standing in the dark. “Well, buddy, let’s keep moving.” He whispered to his bestial friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Krawl! Who would have thought?


	4. Just push on

First things first, Rallen had the idea of attaching the flashlight to a better vantage point. He removed it from his chest and instead placed it on his gas mask. That way he’d shine the light wherever he turned his head. Logical, really, but he guessed he didn’t think of that because the times where he wore any type of head equipment were rare. Anyway…  
He left the room, followed by Aobasar. Their advance was cautious, and Rallen did his best to pay attention to the spectrobes’ behavior in the dark. Its senses were far better than his. Then, thinking of senses, something struck him.

He had released Aobasar into combat without any consideration to the effects the smoke would have on it, and the creature seemed fully unfazed. He moved back into the workshop room for a higher likelihood of an undisturbed call. “Jeena?”

“Yes?” The answer was immediate.

“I don’t think this smoke is phasing the spectrobes at all. Okay, at least not Aobasar.” A very limited subject group, but he doubted Aobasar was the sole exception and the others would be affected. “Do you have any results yet?”

He could hear the noises of a computer panel being used on the other end. “Partly, yes. I compared it to the data of standard samples saved in the database, and there seems to be constituents in it which are characteristic of unfiltered engine gas pollutants, but there’s also a large number of unidentifiable components. Those make up the biggest bulk of the volume.”

“Do you think it could have something to do with the krawl? That’s the only reason I can think of for Ao not being bothered by it.” He glimpsed at the spectrobe beside him, who was quietly, but nevertheless nervously pacing in and out of the room, not sure whether to look at Rallen or listen to the sounds of the hallway.

“It’s a possibility, I guess. We don’t have much information to go off right now. I’ll file the data away for later.”

“Got it. Thanks.” He turned to leave the room again, prompting Aobasar to make way for him.

The bird creature’s interest in the flickering electric sparks not too far ahead in the hallway was evident. The unnatural sound made it puff its feathers in a fashion as if to intimidate. Rallen put a hand on its back to calm it. Broken wires weren’t the issue here.

They passed the spot where the sparking cables were lying. From the looks of it, they’d ruptured out of the wall plating, which was covered in burn marks around the opening. There must have been an electric explosion. Rallen decided he really didn’t want to be close to one of those happening. If he ran across more instances of this, he would have to consider turning off all non-essential electricity to the place, if possible. If the wiring had become faulty enough for it to explode in random places, he’d rather turn down the convenience of using the built-in lamps of the rooms and hallways. Maybe this one spot exploded because a krawl hit it? Just randomly pounce a spot of the wall? It sounded unlikely. Maybe it was a krawl feeding on electricity? He tried to wrap his head around the potential reasons as he and his companion continued walking. Aobasar would have probably preferred flying, but the size of the tunnel didn’t allow for it to move its wings freely enough to achieve the necessary uplift.

As the officer had expected, the noise of the fight from a few minutes ago had made other inhabitants conscious of their behavior. In the distance he could hear movement. Before any of the sounds’ causes reached them, though, another set of doors was reached by them. Rallen again – this time swiftly - checked both, with the first again being locked, but the second being open. He poked his head in to check its safety, and entered. “Here.” He called Aobasar, who followed. It was a regular door, so the spectrobe just barely crammed itself through. Upon the entering of the large creature, the light flickered on automatically, but the lightbulb immediately ruptured. Aobasar shrieked at the loud sound and the sudden cascade of sparks. Rallen quickly closed the door. He couldn’t fault his partner for activating the lights – he would’ve done it himself if he’d taken just another step forward -, and he couldn’t fault it for shrieking either – the blast had made him jump a little as well. He was glad the only damage that occurred in the room had been a volley of sparks raining down onto a metal floor at safe distance from them, and that nothing had caught on fire. Despite the upsides, he couldn’t deny the nagging reality that the krawl he’d already heard in the distance would speed up to find the origin of the bang. He hoped they weren’t the type who had a good memory and forgot the exact direction they’d heard the sound come from, and that they had a bad sense of smell.

Thinking of smell…

Rallen was aware that his prime option of carving his trail through this facility could be mowing down every krawl he happened across. It was a tactic he’d utilized numerous times, even in hives of the krawl, where their numbers were essentially limitless, but he wasn’t exactly sure if he wanted to take his chances at facing such numbers if he could avoid it. For all he knew the krawl had turned this station into a nest of theirs. He hadn’t even explored a fraction of it yet, judging from the size of the place he’d witnessed from the outside. He had to be smart about this.

His other option would be tricking them into thinking he wasn’t there. Many krawl relied mostly on scent to take in their surroundings. If he could find a way to mask his human smell, and call Aobasar back into the prizmod, he could forego encounters with such krawl. Those out of the way, though, he would still run into trouble with others that had better visual senses. He couldn’t walk around the place without his flashlight on, the domestic light system was better left turned off, and even without any light that they could register, not all krawl eyes even worked off electromagnetic radiation. Some had heat vision. He got frustrated thinking about this. All these factors were why he never considered sneaking around krawl. Too many facets to consider.

He was still standing by the door, holding it shut. Aobasar hadn’t moved either, most likely due to its master’s immobility. Rallen could hear movement outside the door. At that moment he cursed himself internally for spending the essentials moments prior to this one standing there like a statue, instead of looking around and coming up with ideas on how to barricade the door. He could take a couple of krawl – it didn’t sound like a mob outside, yet. More sounds became audible. Aobasar shifted uncomfortably in the ray of light shining from Rallen’s head. It looked at him questioningly, unsure why its owner wasn’t acting when its natural enemies were nearby and it felt the urge to attack them. Judging from sound, Rallen wasn’t so sure anymore that the numbers outside were no mob. The room had a heavy-looking shelf standing close to him, but moving it would be loud, and if the krawl were to unanimously attempt to push against a shelf barricade – which they would, if they heard him push it -, they’d open it without much effort.

Rallen sighed soundlessly. He’d just have to fight them.

The sounds reached the space just outside. The door creaked as pressure was applied to it, but it didn’t budge. Rallen blinked in astonishment, but then relaxed at the thought of how obvious it was. Normal krawl didn’t know how to use door handles. He remained in his spot as a human barricade, though, just in case one of the monsters pushed down the handle by chance, or they applied enough force to the door to push it off its hinges. He could feel various limbs tentatively thump against it, testing to see if there was a hole to slither through or a part they could remove. It wasn’t a determined endeavor, which made Rallen think that the krawl weren’t fully sure of his presence. He could hear movement other than the one directly at the door. It seemed that not all krawl that had followed the sound had even picked up his tracks, instead wandering the hallway into the direction where he’d come from, perhaps lured by the sparking cables, perhaps by sheer happenstance.

Eventually, the predators gave up and scattered as well.

Rallen waited for some moments before further relaxing his posture. Either these krawl couldn’t smell him and his spectrobe because of the smoke, or they had lousy olfactory senses to begin with. Under any other circumstances he would have expected at least some of them to pick up on the scent they had left in the corridor, and to vigorously try and succeed in bashing in the door. He shook his head. “Whatever.” He murmured.

He had a look around the room again. It was an uninteresting one, more of a storeroom than anything. There was an opening to a vent shaft in one upper corner of the room. If only he was a primary spectrobe. He could fit though and get his way around that way.

He just stood there, thinking some more for quite a while.

“This sucks.” Was his conclusion. “Aobasar.” The spectrobe looked at him. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me to put so much thought into how to avoid getting into a fight today, but it’s stupid. Now our way back is cut off by krawl anyway. Let’s get out there and push ahead.” The spectrobe looked at him, not understanding a word. He gave it a thumbs-up, and turned to grab the door handle, which made Aobasar register that it was time to leave again.

They both exited the room, and with a hasty pace continued walking. Rallen’s boots produced audible clanking sounds, as did the claws on Aobasar’s talons. The officer’s plan was to push forward as quickly as they could, and find at least something of interest before turning heel to go back to Jeena. Thinking of her, he hoped no krawl would enter the landing bay through the door they unlocked. He was about to dismiss the thought, his first conclusion being that there wasn’t anything he could do about it, but then again, he could at least tell his partner to be on the lookout.

Noises from movement around them already had become more frequent. Their presence certainly raised the activity of the alien inhabitants of the station. As it was, Rallen didn’t care about his voice adding to the sound of their steps, so he decided to briefly comm Jeena. “Hey, Jeena, I don’t think these krawl know how to use doors, but be careful just in case some do get into the landing hall.”

“Got it. Are you alright?”

“Ehhh.” Rallen let out a nervous chuckle. “I’m attracting a lot of attention to me right now.” A krawl entered the lit part of his line of light. It walked on two thin legs, and its upper body was covered in bulbous growths which looked to be filled with liquid. Triggered by the vicinity to Rallen, it opened one of the bulbs, producing a loud hissing sound. The contained liquid evaporated upon contact with the air, creating green smoke that was even denser than the already polluted atmosphere.

He dodged to the side to avoid the spread of the gas cloud while Jeena voiced her frustration. “Rallen! Why are you calling me when that puts you in danger?!” 

“I’ll explain later. No big deal.” He ended the call by turning off the comm link despite his initial promise of leaving it turned on throughout his explorations. Adding to that, he recalled Aobasar into the prizmod. The single krawl he had just dodged wasn’t reason enough to him yet to start a fight. He simply continued down the hallway, picking up his pace to a run.

Another krawl, this time an airborne one, came his way. No, two. Both made a dive at him, but he threw himself to the ground in a roll to dodge. He got back up and continued running. More krawl got close to him, a few of which grazed him, but they couldn’t manage to get a hold of him. A snake-like krawl entered his field of vision laying on the floor in front of him. He could see its head – or at least one end of its body, in case that wasn’t truly the head – register his movement and be about to lunge, so he ducked away from the attack and then jumped over the krawl. He continued pushing on for a couple more wide steps, which seemed to get him to a small segment where there were no krawl immediately having their go at him. He activated his prizmod again and let out the same companion from a few minutes ago.

“Aobasar! Push those back a bit!” He pointed into the direction of the krawl he’d passed with an outstretched arm. “I’d prefer some space.” He loudly clapped his hands together once. This signaled Aobasar what exact action he was requesting. The spectrobe spread its wings and started repeatedly making powerful flaps forward, creating gusts of wind that pushed the krawl back. Rallen couldn’t see most of them, but the one closest to him – the snake – was ripped off the floor, impacting several of the ones standing behind it and dragging them them along down the hallway.

Rallen was satisfied with that outcome and turned around to continue with a quick pace. “Come on.” He called his companion to follow.

He either hadn’t noticed the growths at the bottom of the walls until then, or he had only just reached the part where they started. Veiny amalgamations covered in the colourful signature markings of krawl lined the junctions between floor and walls. In some parts thin tendrils extended from them, which reached both for the ceiling above him as well as covered where he was stepping. Rallen stepped into a larger bundle of them while he was staring at the growths without having noticed the protrusions yet. It produced a disgusting squashing sound as dirty pink liquids spurted out, but Rallen was more so annoyed that his boots were getting dirty than he could muster up any feeling of disgust.

He monitored the floor in front of him with a bit more care before he took another step. Barely still in the range of his beam of light, he saw the growths circle all the way up to the highest point of the ceiling. It looked peculiar in itself but that wasn’t the main reason why it caught his eye. Right after the point where it covered the ceiling, the ceiling – and the walls – stopped being visible, and it didn’t look as if that was just because of his limited line of sight. Was the tunnel opening up? A krawl entered the light beam. He would have to find out by getting rid of that one.

Or by getting rid of ‘those ones’, as more of the same type walked up right behind the first one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And in this chapter you witnessed me being indecisive about how exactly I want Rallen to reach his destination, writing all of the thoughts down as his own, and getting rid of any kind of tension through that.  
> Please let me know if that dragged down your reading experience and it isn't just my author perception. Generally, if you have any kind of criticism for this story at any point, I'd like to know! Just be polite and reasonable about it 'u'


	5. Double trouble

It didn’t take long to mow down the krawl that had approached them. In addition to Aobasar, Rallen had released a dongiga, who cleared the way by ramming itself headfirst into the crowd, while withstanding any wind attacks that brushed its way from the bird spectrobe it allied with. Rallen did a small amount of help by shooting with his blaster whenever he found a fitting opening, but his work was comparatively minimal, and they would have reached the same outcome even if he hadn’t done anything.

At least all of that applied to the first wave of krawl.

The odd growth pattern that had caught his attention earlier was in fact due to the corridor opening up into a larger area. Aobasar and Dongiga had rushed into the area near the end of the fight. Rallen ran after them.

The moment he entered, bioluminescent lights started scattering the walls. The size of the place dawned on him as they gained in intensity, as did the extent of the spread of alien lumps that had taken over the place. It was a large, perfectly dome-shaped hall, with a cylindrical tube reaching up to the ceiling in its center – either an architectural supporting structure or an elevator. The duct was surrounded by various protrusions coming from the ground, which if they hadn’t been covered by krawl tissue, could have passed as the remains of dead trees. Perhaps that was exactly what they used to be once – trees that ended up being overgrown by krawl. Openings to other hallways became visible. There were also intense growths hanging higher up on the walls, seemingly defying gravity. Rallen saw the start of a staircase reaching into one of the alien bodies. Maybe there was a second floor to this place and this hall possessed balconies leading to the entrances? Had all of it been overgrown? He hadn’t felt the emotion until then, but at this point he did develop disgust.

Then, the ground rumbled.

Rallen stumbled back a few steps, and turned his head left and right to figure out the cause of the disturbance. Unable to be overlooked, two holes – each forming a swirling black vortex – were opening up in the floor. Parts of the alien tissue growing in the room were sucked into the holes, merging with the bodies that were rising from them. One massive krawl emerged from each hole.

The first was mostly covered in light blue markings, except for the spots that had just newly merged onto it, which carried hues of pink colour. It was vaguely humanoid, but extra arms protruded from its back. There was no head, instead a long worm-like tendril swayed from where a neck would normally grow. Several devices were embedded in its skin, crackling with energy.

The second closely resembled a slug. There were no colours visible on it safe for the pink spots it carried just like its companion. Its appearance was monochromatic, ranging from grey to black. Thick sludge residue seeped onto the floor all around it. After a moment of what looked like internal movement happening inside it, what looked like pink glowing eyes emerged from the front of its body. Like snail eyes, they extended from the body on thin elastic looking rods.

Rallen backed off a few steps while taking in this sight. He bit his lip. “Great…” He glanced at Aobasar and Dongiga. Both looked fit to fight, and very much ready to go. Aobasar’s feathers were standing to an end in a threatening pose directed at the truck-sized krawl, and Dongiga was stomping and dragging its front feet along the floor eagerly while breathing out heavy huffs of air. Reassured by his partners’ confidence, Rallen entered a firm stance as well. “Alright then.” He threw his left hand forward. “Go!”

Jeena had spent her initial time alone checking the dents and bruises to their ship’s outer plating. There wasn’t anything she could do to mend them, but it was paramount to check the sealing function they provided for space travel. If there’d been a leak before they’d entered the hangar, they would have noticed, so so far there were none, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t on the brink to developing some. She found plenty of spots that needed reinforcement and had gotten to work on that before Rallen had sent in the gas sample. After she’d analysed it, she’d gone back to work. She was almost done when she took out a breath and wiped the sweat off her face with her wrist. It was time to take a break.

She walked back into the ship and got herself some water. Sitting slouched over on the passenger seat, she considered what Rallen would be up to. She hadn’t liked the way the last conversation had ended, but her anger at being cut off by him subsided quickly. He could have just told her to not continue speaking, but it was whatever. It all had the same effect. The only thing that still bothered her was that she wouldn’t hear about his status until he chose to turn his comm link back on. On one hand a decision that was unlikely for him to make in the middle of a fight, and rightfully so, but on the other hand it would provide her with some information to go off to decide whether she needed to help him somehow or not. Before he’d turned it off, she had essentially had a live auditory feed of his activity – doors closing, spectrobes screeching… 

She was about to shake her head when the floor started to rumble. It wasn’t as intense as where Rallen was, but it was nonetheless perceivable. She jumped out of her seat in surprise and concern and rushed to the cockpit to look outside to spot any potential cause for it. Not spotting anything – not even at the gate’s door – she opened the ship’s ramp again and carefully peeked her head outside for a better look. Still no signs of anything. The source of the quake must have not been close to her.

“Rallen, what are you up to?” She whispered to herself. She was worried. She checked her own comm link to make sure that he’d still not turned his on again and she’d accidently turned hers off, but it was of course still the same situation as before.

Unable to properly deduce what else she could be doing from the information she was able to work with, she decided it was best she got back to work on the plating, even if her break had been minimal. If push came to shove with Rallen running back in a hurry, followed by a mob of krawl, they could always take off and leave, making the internal repairs while in spa- … Jeena stopped herself for a moment as she grabbed her tools, and facepalmed. Krawl could exit into space too. She groaned both mentally and physically but got back to work anyway. If they had to make a run for it, they had to make a run for it, whether the krawl could follow or not. That required a safe, vacuum-proof outer hull.

In the case of a chase through space, they had good chances at outpacing the krawl. They could shake them off and then take the time for further repairs and plan making. This was a scenario that needed to be provided with properly working engines, which Jeena had her concerns about, but they would either have to hold through such a situation in the state that they were, or she’d still find the chance to work on them after finishing her outer patchwork.

She reminded herself that it was all just safety measures that she was thinking about. For all she knew, Rallen was handling the alien population like a pest exterminator. She frowned at the comparison she’d just made for a second, but then got back to work. A lot of research had been done into the krawl’s intelligence since their last encounter with Krux, and their sentience and importance to the ecosystem of space was undeniable, but their inert hostility did require harsh measures against them in a situation like this. She knew Rallen had become more conscious of his fighting engagements with the foreign creatures over the years and didn’t find much glee in it anymore, but she wasn’t sure if all the krawl that they’d fought against found their demise in self-defense or if killing some could have been avoided.

Dismissing her considerations of the amoeboids, a solid fact of their situation was that they needed access to the space station’s technology. Rallen sooner or later had to find out where it was, and they had to map out a safe path to get her there. The chances that he would figure out how to use any of the tools that would be at their disposal was nigh null, so the officer with the far larger experience with ancient technology between the two was who would have to work on it. Without her priming the station’s systems to do so, Jeena doubted that they would open another portal as their way back home at random.

She finished the last patch of temporary sealing and picked up all the materials she’d laid out around the ship. It was time to work on the engines.

Rallen was thrown against a wall – a very fleshy, squirming wall. He tore himself away from it and took a few steps ahead before kneeling down on one knee in exhaustion. Dongiga and Aobasar were keeping them busy, he could allow himself a moment to catch his breath. The lower than normal oxygen uptake he had to work with because of the gas mask didn’t do favors to his stamina.

As soon as he could take off the mask, he would have to use something to heal himself. Not expecting to require any fast rejuvenators when he and Jeena had left Kollin, he hadn’t taken any along with him on the trip. He hadn’t had any dangerous fights with krawl in years. There was only one option that he carried with him for other reasons than healing: his lucky riceball.

He groaned at the thought of using the souvenir from Kaio as he got back up and switched the blaster on his right arm to his stun-fist equipment. The officer ran forward towards the two enemy monsters again. The crystalline structures funnily enough labeled ‘rice balls’ were a specialty from the far away solar system. Back during his and Jeena’s involuntary excursion to its planets, he had used them to heal himself during battles, because he hadn’t been carrying any of the infusions manufactured in Nanairo with him. He had refrained from using up his last maximum effect rice ball, that he liked to take along with him as a reminder of the last victory they’d had over Krux and of all the friends they’d helped save from the krawl invasion the half-human had tried to conduct.

He stopped his sprint just beside the slug monster and rammed his right fist onto the floor, creating a small-range shockwave that froze the creature momentarily. Dongiga took the opportunity to ram the massive horns protruding from above its face into the enemy’s head. The slug regained control of its body and started splitting up sideways, revealing a mouth filled with acid, but Dongiga jumped back in time to avoid any sort of contact with the substance. Rallen made a run for it just the same, as one of the pink eyes tried to move towards him. He switched back to his blaster and shot the outgrowth, making it flinch back into the krawl’s head.

While Dongiga and Rallen weren’t having the greatest success with their enemy, they were holding their ground. Aobasar on the other hand, was less lucky. The spectrobe looked close to fainting, trying its hardest to dodge the beams of energy that its semi-humanoid enemy sent its way from the devices on its body. A fickle task when the krawl kept cutting off its movements by worming its ‘head’ right into the directions Aobasar wanted to dodge into.

Rallen cursed himself internally for not having kept a better track of the battlefield and both his companions’ status. He wanted to run over to help his partner, but was stuck on the opposite side of the hall, and his way forward was blocked by the grey krawl in front of him. He was about to withdraw Aobasar back into his prizmod, when another beam of blue plasma hit it, this time directly in the face. Aobasar fainted and slumped to the floor, prompting the krawl to try to pounce on its body, but Rallen recalled the feathered monster before the impact of that attack. The krawl turned its worm-like appendage into the direction where the beam of light the spectrobe converted to flew. Rallen glared right back at it, even if his expression wasn’t visible through the gas mask, and the krawl wouldn’t have understood the meaning of it even if it could see it.

Rallen changed the selection on his prizmod to release a gekikuri. The spectrobe started accelerating even before its body had properly materialized and crashed right into the krawl at the other end of the hall. That particular creature had always been an aggressive and hard to control one, but its short temper was an advantage in this instance. The impact ripped off one of the krawl’s legs, causing it to fall over defenselessly. Its multiple arms tried to reach for Gekikuri, but the spectrobe met offense with offense and rammed its two heads into the krawl repeatedly, tearing away at the body with its ribbed horns, hissing and screaming as it did so. Rallen was baffled by the speed with which his companion had ended that fight, but was called back to reality when another pink eye bulb swung at him.

Rallen was slung to the side, slamming onto the floor. Dongiga tried to step onto the antenna, but wasn’t fast enough to impact it before the krawl pulled it back. Rallen pushed himself back onto his feet and started firing at the enemy. At first his shots were random, but after a moment he decided to focus on one of the pink growths covering the alien’s body. Dongiga followed his example. It rammed the side of its body into the enemy in such a way that the horn emerging from its shoulder bore into a pink spot. The surrounding membrane ruptured, and viscous liquid splattered all over the spectrobe. The krawl convulsed at the sudden injury and part of its body became immovable and lame. Rallen was about to command Dongiga to attack again in a similar manner when Gekikuri barreled into the slug. The spectrobe master threw his hands to his head in frustration over the unproductive behavior, but then tried his best at shooting the pink spots again, which was a significantly harder task now as his fast-moving companion prompted the krawl to move erratically. Dongiga to his relief followed his strategy and repeated its earlier attack while trying to not hit its companion, making it miss the aimed for spots several times.

Three against one, their victory was only a matter of time. Eventually the huge creature sacked to the floor, lifelessly. Just like the other one Gekikuri had finished off earlier, its body started to dissolve. Rallen took a breath of relief and gave his partners a thumbs up, before walking away to gain a safe distance from the corpse when the noticed its internal acid seeping out.

His relief quickly vanished as he noticed dark silhouettes that emerged from the corridors that the hall functioned as a nexus for. The noise of the fight had made all inhabitants of the station aware of his presence, and the only reason they hadn’t approached earlier had either been respect for their huge brethren or fear of becoming the victim of collateral damage. Now that both giants were done for, they couldn’t resist the urge to approach the potential meals in front of them.

Rallen found himself stumbling closer to the middle of the room, krawl approaching them from every direction. Once he consciously noticed this, he turned his heel and ran directly towards the center, jumping over tendrils and tissue that covered the floor more so in the middle of the room than it covered the rest of the flooring. Dongiga and Gekikuri cautiously followed him, but couldn’t take their eyes off the numbers surrounding them. Dongiga looked intimidated, while Gekikuri looked as if its heads where overwhelmed with the decision on where to start an attack.

Rallen reached the cylindrical tube that went upwards to the ceiling. It was dirty, covered in residue from the smoke filling the air, but its lowest part seemed as if made of glass. Rallen was just barely able to make out a level of transparency to the wall. In the center, he could see what looked suspiciously like an elevator. After circling it once, he came upon an opening. The tube was open to one side and inside was another cylinder. Embedded in it was a slidding door to the elevator, with an access panel beside it. Rallen ran up to it and pressed the buttons, but there was no reaction from the device, not even a flash of light from the bulb attached above the panel. Lining the space inbetween the two tubes, though, were stairs. Stairs that led up to the higher level. To Rallen’s dismay, they didn’t reach far before their path was entirely blocked by krawl tissue that had filled the entire stairwell. The spectrobe master glanced behind himself. His companions stood close-by and the circle of krawl had almost reached them. There was no way out.

But Rallen had an idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rallen is cornered; oh no! And all this on ravioli day at the NPP cafeteria  
> (This won't be mentioned anywhere in the fic. I just don't know what to say about this chapter! Except that I hope you enjoyed reading it, of course :) )


	6. Easy-peasy

“Gekikuri, Dongiga, come back!” The spectrobe master called as he withdrew both of them into the prizmod. With them off the battlefield, he selected two other spectrobes that he thought himself lucky for having taken along. Without the first, his plan wouldn’t have a chance of working. He also thought himself lucky for the stairs being wide enough to allow its passage.

Rallen released an inkaflare and a gorberus.

Both spectrobes assessed their situation and immediately looked at Rallen for commands. “Inkaflare!” The spectrobe straightened up at the sound of its name. Rallen ran up a part of the stairs, closer to the growths of tissue. “Burn this!” In addition to his vocal command, Rallen thrust his arms forward towards the mass repeatedly. This, in combination with ‘Burn’, gave Inkaflare the right idea. The spectrobe strepped along forward up the stairs while Rallen retreated, and started firing volleys of flames out of its arms. The growths writhed under the application of heat, and the first layers quickly charred and shrunk from the evaporation of their contained liquids. The stench was perceivable even through the filters of Rallen’s gas mask.

Both satisfied with and relieved by the effects of the fire, Rallen turned around to look at Gorberus, who had followed him up the stairs, and looked as if it desperately required orders on how to deal with the krawl closing in on them. The first amoeboids had already reached the bottom of the stairway.

“Gorberus.” It looked relieved at the sound of its name. “Fire at them! Keep them away as far as you can!” Rallen had a hard time gesturing as he tried to symbolize Gorberus’s energy beams by moving his hands around in front of his head, but it understood. The spectrobe turned its body into the direction of the offenders, and started releasing its beams. The krawl couldn’t be halted in their approach, but they were slowed down.

The three of them ascended the stairs. Rallen and Gorberus traversed over the dead remains littering the steps’ surfaces that Inkaflare left behind. The heat was just barely bearable for Rallen. Hadn’t he already required a gas mask, he would have needed one now to not be harmed by the dense wafts of smoke the fire produced. The elevated temperatures made him sweat, causing the underlayer of his uniform to uncomfortably stick to his skin. Gorberus’ stone body enabled it to not feel as many drawbacks from the situation as its human master, but what it instead struggled with was the crowd below them. The spectrobe visibly strained under the high frequency energy output it had to produce.

It was a strenuous ascend, but they reached the top without unexpected incidents. Inkaflare burst through one more layer of flesh on top and a new floor opened up to them. Rallen rushed on past the spectrobe as soon as he could to get out of the close to scalding heat in the stairwell, but quickly realized he shouldn’t be in a hurry only for that. They had a swarm of krawl right behind them. He needed to figure out what to do next.

His eyes frantically scanned the room. It was a small plain room, again a nexus, but this time only to two paths – one a regular door to his right, and an important looking gate right in front of him. Rallen rushed up to the gate and pressed the ‘Open’ button next to it. He did this just to get the option out of the way - fully expecting it to not work – and was already in his tracks to run and check the regular door, when the light above the buttons flashed green and the gate opened. Rallen was as if petrified for a split second.

‘Lucky.’ It shot into his head. He rushed into the room. ‘Lucky, lucky, lucky.’ “Back!” He called and withdrew the spectrobes to the prizmod for added speed. On the other side of the gate he jumped right to the controls and closed it. The portal obliged and slid shut as the first krawl exited the staircase. Rallen heard projectiles being shot against the door, but the material didn’t budge or otherwise seem to retain damage in the slightest.

The officer whirled around to take in his surroundings, checking for any signs of krawl influence. While there was in fact none to see, the stronger reason for why his body inadvertently relaxed was what he was seeing instead.

He had reached the command center. He was staring right out into space through its windows.

He decided to release Inkaflare and Gorberus again, to let them see that they’d helped him get to safety. And because he would appreciate a bit of company. The space they could move in was quite large, because the room was incredibly spacious, but he made sure to make it clear to them to not step any further than where he was standing once he’d walked up to where the control interfaces started. There were multiple, all arranged in a half-circle, but not all were attached to the walls. They were more so arranged in layers with one behind the other.

Thinking of company, Rallen reactivated his comm link. “Jeena?” He breathed out, still exhausted from the stress he’d gone through.

“Rallen?” His partner answered immediately. He had caught her in the middle of tinkering with the NPP ship’s engine. “Are you okay?” She could hear the strain in his voice from just the one name he’d uttered.

“I’m good, yeah.” He slumped into one of the seats in front of an interface. He then noticed something peculiar. “Hey, Jeena, before I say anything else, do you have time to look at another gas sample?”

It was an unexpected request for her, but she stood up from where she had been kneeling and walked over to the computer. “I do. Why?”

Rallen detached the gas analysis device from his belt and held it up in the air while he ran its program. “Just wanna know if I’m seeing right or am imagining things. The air just looks too clean here.” The device finished its run and he turned it off again. “I’d be really grateful if I could take the mask off for a bit.” He noticed Gorberus looking at him and waved it over. He gave the spectrobe a few pats on the head, which made it lie down in front of him.

“Okay, I’ll look at it right away.” Jeena said as she opened the new files on her end. “What happened?”

“I’m in the control center now.”

“You are?!” She almost cut him off with the speed that she replied with. “That’s such a relief, Rallen!”

“It is, it is. I mean, at least I think this is the control center. It looks too big and important and has all the computers and a window.” He leaned further back in the chair. “No idea how I’m going to do anything here or how to get you here – there’s like at least… a bunch of krawl right outside the door, but…”

“We’ll figure it out. One step after the other.” Jeena smiled at the good news, even if he couldn’t see her. She clicked through gas files to compare them to the new sample. “Rallen, I think you can get your gas mask-free moments. The air you’re in seems perfectly fine.”

“Oh I am so glad.” The officer said while tearing off the mask mid-sentence. There was no sting to his eyes, nor any scratching in his throat, confirming the immediate safeness of the air. Both spectrobes looked at him curiously, seeing their owner with his face revealed for the first time that day. “Hi guys.” Rallen waved at them with a tired expression.

“Who are you talking to?” Jeena asked.

“Spectrobes. Life savers. Again. Always.” His partner chuckled at the descriptors.

There was a moment both of them spent in silence, feeling glad about things going well, before Jeena continued speaking. “So, what does the room look like? Is there anything that looks useful, and what should we do next?”

Rallen described the looks of the many consoles in the room, as well as the path he had gone through to get there from the docking bay. He stood up from his seat and walked around a bit to get a better look at things. None of the symbols or inscriptions on some of the buttons were readable to him. He couldn’t tell whether it was the same language he’d seen on the blueprints in the repair workshop earlier or not, but he suspected that they were. The centermost interface embedded in the wall was the largest, spanning the widest. It essentially combined multiple singular control positions into one computer. Rallen noticed what looked similar to an ignition key in its keyhole in one corner. “Think I should turn it?”

Jeena made a face of disdain that he couldn’t see. “I’d rather you not. I’d prefer being there with you when you activate anything. I’ll have to have a look at everything myself, but it sounds very promising from your description. Are there… still krawl in front of the door?”

Rallen stayed silent for a moment as he listened for any noises from the gate. He couldn’t hear anything, so he walked towards it. The room was large after all, so it was easy for potential sounds to not reach him. “I’m not sure. I’ll give it a listen.” He stopped in front of the portal and positioned an ear close to its surface. Faint scraping could be heard, which could be assigned as the sound of some krawl idly moving about outside. “I think it’s a Yes, sadly.” Something thumped against the door after he said this – most likely a krawl reacting to his voice. Rallen sighed and walked away again. “I don’t know, Jeena. I don’t think I can safely get you up here. I’m not even sure how I’m supposed to get back down. Sure, I can find a way somehow, but I haven’t thought about any plans yet.” He gave Inkaflare a few pats on one arm as he walked past it to sit back down in the same chair from earlier. “You know what would be really nice? Luring all of the krawl from the big hall into the corridors attached to it, and then locking them there. This control center is big and fancy. It’s bound to be able to make that doable, right? Right.” He played with some of the buttons in front of him – without a reaction, as nothing was turned on.

Jeena blinked at the proposition Rallen had only half-heartedly made. “You know what, Rallen? Maybe we can do something about this without me being there. Turn on your video transmission, please.”

“Huh? Oh right, I can actually show you what all this looks like.” Rallen felt stupid for not having thought of it, but he was also too beat up to dwell on the feeling for more than a second. He complied and turned on the comm link’s video function while holding up his arm in the way necessary for the camera to capture his face. Jeena could see just how covered in dirt and fluids he was. “That’s a little clunky for you to paint yourself a picture with, though, isn’t it?”

She sighed, but smiled. “It is, but it’s a start. Can you move towards the main console again and show it to me?” Rallen stood up and did just that.

After Jeena got a good view of the situation she asked Rallen to turn the ignition key after all. The system’s holograms flickered briefly, but split seconds later Rallen found himself surrounded by dozens of 3-dimensional portrayals of charts, maps, and machinery filling the air, one window of light projected above each console.

“I hope the working gate controls were a good indicator that nothing here will fry itself.” The spectrobe master muttered.

“What?”

“Oh, you know. Lamps bursting out of nowhere. All automatic doors except one not working. I’ve grown doubtful in this place.”

The woman swallowed hard. “Let’s try to hurry then.” She received a nod from her partner.

Jeena, who had worked with ancient technology before, while she didn’t have an easy time deciphering what the controls were for – especially not through a video feed that wasn’t meant for footage transmission of surroundings instead of facials shots -, managed to piece together how the computers functioned. It wasn’t a fast endeavor, and Rallen’s inability to not press some buttons on his own accord instead of solely listening to her requests was a bit of a hindrance, but they eventually reached a complete overview map of the space station’s internal structure. All of it was displayed in a blue hue that went along with what most other aspects of the hologram were in, except one part coloured in red that had a message of text floating over it which neither of them could read. They decided to dismiss its importance as it didn’t look like an area they’d need to go to.

“That looks like where you and the ship are.” Rallen pointed at the part that symbolized their landing bay.

“It does. And you came through the hallway that lead to the nexus in the center?” Jeena noticed the symmetry the path held to the one going into the exact opposite side from the center hall. At its end there was what looked like another identical landing bay.

“Yup. Looks like I missed a lot of doors to rooms there. Guess I was too busy avoiding krawl to even notice they were there.”

“I can’t blame you.” Jeena leaned forward in an attempt to have a closer look at what she was seeing over the comm link projection. “Can you try pressing one of the doors we want to lock?”

“Sure.” Rallen did just that. They’d come to realize that the interface was simple to use on the basic levels. The holograms reacted to touch. Hadn’t it been in an unknown language they probably wouldn’t have had any issues browsing through the options. Pressing the door opened up a different window with what Jeena assumed to be settings. They tried around a bit until the hologram of the door shut close. Jeena clapped her hands together in joy.

“That should be it!” She put her left arm back into the position she’d been holding it in to watch the feed. “Let’s do that with the others as well. Do you… Do you think you can check if they really are closed after we’re done?”

Rallen let out a breath. “Of course. I have to get rid of all the krawl who aren’t locked in anyway. I’ve had enough of a break tinkering around here with you to get back to butt kicking. No biggie.” He gave her an OK sign with his free hand.

It wasn’t long after their conversation over the gate controls that an exhausted Rallen returned to Jeena in the landing bay, hands held high over his head, shouting a tired ‘Woo” as he walked up to her standing next to their ship. A hanebakuon zorg trailed behind him, covered in only slightly less grime than its master. Jeena touched her forehead and shook her head, but was glad he was back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, the actively dangerous parts of the trip are over!


	7. Bad but working Skype connection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is just fun conversations. There's really nothing exciting happening in this story anymore; just wrapping things up. Hope you like it anyway!

Finding a way to open a portal to Nanairo hadn’t been as easy as finding the nexus gates’ controls. Jeena had spent an hour sifting through various programs that displayed star maps, unsure which one could be the one she was looking for. The language differed from the one of the Ancients that she’d witnessed on the old technology of Nanairo. Two letters of the used alphabet looked similar to the old Nanairans’, but that was it. She eventually gave up on trying to figure out the foreign controls and decided to circumvent them by connecting the station to their NPP ship. She laid out all the way from the hangar to the command center wires – which, to her partner’s shock, she just so happened to have taken along for the flight; I mean, that’s a lot of distance to cover – and attached the two to each other. Finding a middle ground between the technologies wasn’t an easy task either, but she eventually managed to draw up a blurry text-less star map with the NPP jet’s interface of which she was certain that it controlled portal creation. She entered coordinates just outside of Nanairo’s borders, so as to not catch any more unsuspecting space travelers, and set the duration to unlimited, so the portal wouldn’t close before they told it to.

“Awesome.” Rallen clapped his hands and rubbed them together. He had spent the time Jeena had been working cleaning himself up as best he could without a spare uniform, and had healed his wounds by eating his last riceball. A sad moment he had almost recovered from. “Let’s go home then.”

“I don’t think we should do that, Rallen.” Jeena said as she got up from her seat by the passenger controls and went forward to sit in the pilot’s seat.

“What?! Why?” Rallen sputtered in surprise.

“If we disconnect the portal will close eventually. Don’t you want to come back later after we’ve told command about this? If we go through, we might not get the chance to.” The officer explained while looking at her partner.

He put a hand to his head. “Agh. I hadn’t thought about that. So what then? What do we do?”

Jeena smiled. “I think I can make a call from here. The portal should allow us to establish a connection.”

Rallen gave her a surprised ‘Oh.’ look. He shook it off and his expression became enthusiastic. “Well, go ahead! Give it a go!” He urged her.

Jeena complied and typed in the communication orders she’d already planned on. The resulting sound of a connection being made with their recipient was delayed, but it worked. After a few moments of waiting, what they knew to be their grey haired boss answered the call with a video feed, but the video footage of him was turned into nothing but a silhouette of static.

“Rallen, Jeena, is that you?” The commander asked.

“It’s us, Sir.” Jeena confirmed. She was about to continue, but Rallen chimed in.

“Believe it or not,” He started sarcastically. “we were sucked into another portal.”

This knowledge made the man put a finger to his forehead, which the officers couldn’t see. ‘Not again.’ entered his mind just the same as it had theirs at the start of the adventure. The only difference he perceived from last time was that no one had even noticed their disappearance, and no efforts to get them back had ensued.

“We’re in a relatively empty part of space, far away from Nanairo.” Jeena started her explanation. “The only reason we’re able to call you is that we’ve managed to get a grasp of the technology that’s pulled us here in the first place. Commander,” Her tone became that of someone making a request. “there is a vast abandoned space station here, just floating in the middle of nowhere. It’s ancient from the looks of it. And…” She paused for a split second. “There’s krawl in it. We’ve locked them away, but we’d like to make some calls to figure out the best course of action on how to handle them and then request backup to come here.” Rallen gave her a surprised look, as they hadn’t discussed this prior, but he didn’t disagree with the plan, so he didn’t say anything.

There was silence for some moments. The Commander was considering the proposition. “There is no possibility of the krawl entering Nanairo through the portal?”

Jeena realized that they weren’t entirely sure about the possibility of that. They didn’t know if there was no way for krawl to leave the station through an area they hadn’t explored, of which there were many. She grimaced.

“Not that we know of, Sir.” Rallen replied as he gave her a pat on the shoulder, having noticed that she’d entered a moral dilemma in her head.

“Very well. Make your calls and inform me of the outcome afterwards. I take it your contact database is intact, or do you need me to send the information?”

“It’s all still here, Sir, thank you. Our ship largely retained damage to its flight and hull systems, which I’ve already repaired, but software is fine.” Jeena reported.

Grant nodded, which they again couldn’t see. “Good. Commander Grant, over.” He ended the call.

“Nice!” Rallen said, referring to their ability to reach their home, at least vocally. He held up a hand to Jeena in a manner that requested a high-five. She laughed and met it with her own hand. “So who did you want to call?” He asked.

“Our krawl experts, of course. We need to figure out what to do with the ones we have here.” She said as she pulled up the options to establish the connections.

“Oh.” Her partner said. He should have seen that coming. He frowned. “I thought I’d just get rid of them gradually.”

“That’s the basic option to fall back on. We should at least consider other options.” She looked at her fellow officer. His expression had become glum. Not because he was sad that he couldn’t fight krawl – she highly doubted that, knowing him – but because he was considering what else the krawl would do if they were to leave the station.

“Remember, Rallen. The krawl don’t normally attack healthy planets.” 

He gave a slow nod. “What if it’s not ‘normally’? What if these krawl end up with another Krux who sends them to attack people again?” She knew he was getting mildly worked up about this.

“What if that happens with spectrobes?” That allusion made him halt in his thoughts. “They could be used for evil too, it’s just less likely.”

Rallen nodded again, this time back to his normal speed. He was surprised that he and his partner had never talked about the possibility of spectrobes being used for evil; just dark spectrobes in connection with krawl. She filed the thought away for a later time. “That’s true, that’s true. I just get worried with all the things that have happened.” He turned his head to look over his shoulder. “I wish these seats weren’t attached in place so I could drag the passenger seat over…” Jeena smiled at his evident dismissal of the heavy topic and pushed the call buttons.

Two questioning ‘Hello?’s met their ears once the group call was established. The two scientists on the other end could see who they had been pulled into the conversation with, but the faulty connection left them in the dark about who had initiated the call.

“Professor Wright, Jado, it’s Jeena. Rallen and I are in an unusual situation and we could really use some expert opinions on what to do with a small krawl hive.” She said this in such a casual tone of voice that Wright started laughing.

“Hello Jeena!” He replied joyfully. “I’d love to help. It’s in the middle of the night here on Genshi, but I guess the krawl know no rest once they put their mind to something. Jado?” He directed the conversation at his former student turned less accomplished colleague to make him speak up.

“Are you asking me about whether krawl sleep or if I’m ready to help them? It’s ‘Yes’ to both. What situation are we talking about?” He addressed the officer at the other end of the portal again. “And why is your connection so terrible?” The allied highkrawl interlocked his fingers in front of his mouth in a pose of focus, while Wright sat relaxed, idly resting his head on a hand, but paying no less attention to the conversation than the other.

“It’s a long story. We were sucked through a portal and ended up at an abandoned space station overrun by krawl. We’ve secured a perimeter, but they’re still filling all the rest of the station. We were wondering if there’s a way to chase them off without just killing them.”

Professor Wright nodded. “I see. That’s a good question.” Jado nodded as well. “Are there any planets close to you?” After the events of Kaio and the proceedings that followed, Wright had branched out his expertise from archeology to krawl research. The two subject matters occasionally interlocked, with interdependencies between spectrobe fossils and krawl coming to light, but it largely left him running more research projects that had no connections to each other than he had run before. He was a busy man. A busier man.

“None, no. We’re in a very secluded part of space.”

“Explains why they are sticking to a chunk of metal instead of organic compounds.” Jado chimed in. The krawl had been the main reason Nanairo had started putting together a proper research branch dedicated to the alien lifeforms. After escaping death in the Kaio system once more like a cockroach, he had dragged his dying form along back to Nanairo, where after much deliberation he was helped back on his feet. A chaotic process ensued which ended up with him becoming both an officer of the NPP and a researched in his species’ field.

“Are you saying if we got this thing close to a planet, they would leave?” Rallen joined the conversation for the first time, simply not having found the opportunity to say something earlier. If the video transmission were working, he would have waved at them in greeting at some point, but as things were he simply remained leaned onto the pilot seat’s backrest.

“They would, but it’d be a slow process.” Professor Wright answered that question. “And even then I wouldn’t be too sure that they’d leave entirely. What does it look like in the ship? Depending on the hive size, I’d expect them to spread out more, but still use the station as their nest if they’ve already taken a liking to it as their home.”

“Yeaaahhh, it is pretty bad…” Rallen confirmed, judging from what he’d seen with the overgrown walls and whatnot. “What if we brought the ship to Fons? The orbiting satellite there could chase them out with its lightbeam if we bring this place in the right position.” He gestured around with his hands as he spoke this, evidently liking the idea of shooting a large light beam around space.

“Rallen, we don’t even know how to fly this thing yet.” Jeena reminded him. Rallen wanted to counter that that was something they would have to figure out no matter what, but Jado interrupted his train of thought.

“You run into danger of them inhabiting Fons then there.” He pointed out. “I don’t think anyone wants that.”

“Oh.” Rallen said, frowning sadly. He really didn’t want any krawl on Fons again. He loved spending his time there when he had a few consecutive days off to make the trip. He could let his spectrobes roam in select areas.

Wright sighed. “It’d be nice if we had a portable satellite like that. Reverse engineering the Ancient’s technology really hasn’t been working fast enough, has it?” Nobody answered his question, but it was more so because they all silently agreed than not knowing what to say, although the krawl among them had mixed feelings about the equipment that had so often been used against his species.

“I do think you’re onto something with your idea of light.” Jado said after a moment of silence. “Get Professor Kate into the call. Ask her if there’s a system with a bright sun that has no inhabited planets in it. Get the station there and orbit the sun for a while. They should leave.”

Rallen and Jeena looked at each other. “That sounds like a promising idea.” Jeena said, smiling. Jado waved a hand in an ‘Of course it is.’ gesture. Wright slightly glared at the familiar arrogance. “I’ll call the professor right away.” She pressed the necessary buttons and pulled Kate into the group call as well.

“Hello?” She asked with just as much confusion as her colleagues had, prompting Wright to grin.

Jeena proceeded by repeating her explanation of the situation to Kate, followed by the inquiry for an uninhabited solar system with a sufficient sun.

“I see.” Kate said, hand to her chin. “I do have one in mind. I’ll send you the coordinates.” She typed away at her computer. “And you have the means necessary to open a portal at any range?”

Jeena sighed. “I hope. We haven’t tested anything beyond opening a small portal to Nanairo. I think it could go much farther than that, but the size of the portal might become a problem. I think one of the engines of the station is busted, and I don’t know how high the energy output needs to be for it to open a portal that the entire station can pass through.”

“What about calling in equipment from Nanairo?” Wright suggested. “I know there’s krawl there and it’s not the safest place, but you said they’re locked away, so any engineers should be safe as long as they stay were you are.”

“That sounds like a plan.” Jeena agreed. “I don’t especially like it, but it would be doable. I’ll check if we need to do that after the call. I’ll contact you again once I know.” She paused, remembering that Wright probably very much wanted to go back to bed. “Or I’ll call Kollin’s engineering department directly. You probably want to still get some of your rest.” She smiled apologetically at the thought.

Wright gave her a grateful chuckle. “I’d be alright with that, yeah.”

“Aalright.” Jeena said concludingly, laughing a little herself. “Thanks for your help, everyone.” They ended the call and Rallen and Jeena nodded at each other, agreeing to get to work.

The coordinates Kate sent over could be reached, and they did manage to open a larger portal than the one they’d used earlier, but it wasn’t large enough by far. Jeena opened the one back to Nanairo and called Hank, along with some other leading engineers. Over the course of the conversation they added two astrophysicists, to help figure out what amount of energy was necessary to open a portal of the estimated size of the space station. Rallen removed himself from the conversation very soon after that started, as the brain gymnastics with numbers started sounding like a foreign language to him. He left the ship and released the recovered Aobasar from his prizmod to have some company.

Eventually, negotiations were over and the professionals from the call and some helpers came over in transport ships to join the two officers with the necessary machinery – and some food and water for the stranded ones. Jeena left the work to their hands, finally taking her well-deserved long break with minimal interruptions until the largest space portal any of them had ever witnessed was opened.


	8. Final wrap-up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter! A casual finale!

The plan had worked, the krawl had fled. Their swarms had moved to the next-best planet. Professor Kate had chosen a star system with just one single arid dead planet, similar to Nessa’s rocky regions but with no people or animals living on it.

The team didn’t teleport the station elsewhere right away. Instead, Rallen opened the nexus gates again one after the other to check if any krawl had stayed, and to have Inkaflare rid the place of all the immobile alien growths that had flourished on so many of the surfaces.

The engineers who were left with nothing to do once the additional engines had been set up, and had gained free reign over the station as long as they wore gas masks, took it upon themselves to have a look at the electricity net, which Rallen had let them know was far from trustworthy when it came to some aspects like lighting and doors. They figured out that the different functions of the station – such as steering and portal opening vs the lights – ran on different energy networks, explaining why one – which was indisputably more essential than the other – still worked while the other had mostly fallen to ruins. Once they had haphazardly fixed the systems, three of them branched off to work on the ventilation system, as they all agreed that working while wearing gas masks was terrible.

After almost being sucked out into space if he hadn’t been grabbed and pulled back by Inkaflare, Rallen knew what had happened to the broken engine room and marked the area as ‘Do not enter’. Someone would need to fix that hole in the station at a later time.

All in all, they made quick work at getting an incredibly spacious space station into a condition that was safe for a person to roam it, even if there was still a lot of dead krawl waste lying around.

What was the most curious to them were the hindquarters of it. Beside the two identical branches to the side that led to the landing bays, the front portion of the station had been what looked like living quarters and facilities such as a communal kitchen. The largest portion compared to everything else, though, was the part at the end of the place. It was what appeared to have been a complex garden back before the krawl rid it of its nutrients. Skeletal plant remains stuck out of a ground of lifeless earth instead of metal floor. The area consisted of multiple layers, most – but not all of them – were interconnected, while there was still enough space left in many spots for Aobasar to rise and take flight after Rallen gave it the good-to-go to do so.

“What do you say we take this back to Nanairo?” Rallen asked Jeena as she walked up beside him.

“I thought that was the plan already.” She smirked at him. “With a few changes, I think this would make a great place for your spectrobes, where you don’t have to keep an eye on them the entire time.”

“Oh yes.” Rallen agreed. “Ohhhh yes, I would love that.” He would have felt bad for saying this, watching Aobasar fly above them as he did so, but it was a chance that he was just too willing to take to feel guilty for wanting a bit more time to do other things in his life than take care of spectrobes.

The station was moved to the outskirts of Nanairo, cleaned, repaired, and then taken into the process of converting it into an indoors spectrobes habitat. Numerous linguists and a handful of historians had their interests peaked by the foreign structure, and set to work on deciphering its origins, whereas the engineers came to the realization that the technology of the Ancients they were already fairly familiar with was more powerful than this stations’, safe for the impressive feats of its portal generator.

Overall, the space station’s discovery had been a huge enrichment to all of Nanairo, but more than it was for anyone else, it was one for Rallen, who once in its finished state could finally see his spectrobes go about their day in what was the closest to nature that he could provide them with, at least unless he would stumble across a planet suitable for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. I could have gone into details for the kind of culture I imagined behind the space station, but I decided against it as people from Nanairo wouldn't have an easy time figuring its past out. I didn't plan any of it in detail anyway - it was simply a foreign space-faring culture who had this station in their solar system until krawl attacked and things went wrong, setting it off its course and drifting far away from home. The people shared similar ancestry to Nanairo, having developed from the same ancients, and losing less of the technological knowledge than Nanairo had, but still being less advanced. Except when it comes to portals. Damn, these guys knew how to make portals.  
> ( ^ー^ )


End file.
